for couples_therapy: write a love letter

Dissect a trillion sighs away -- will you get this letter?
Jagged pulp sliced in my veins, I write to remember
'Cause I'm a million miles away -- will you get this letter?
Jagged pulp sliced in my veins, I write to remember

War, he learns fairly quickly, is not pretty. Not that he was expecting it to be, but there's a difference between being told, hearing countless stories from Adam over the years, and actually seeing. Shadows of pain and death linger in every corner of the wasted battlefield, bathing him in horror as they latch on to an ability to empathize that's only grown stronger over the years. Could have dones and what ifs creep into the way he frames his shoulders, weighing him down. And all of it -- every corpse that used to house a friend that he stumbles by as his body puts itself back together; every voice he can make out, shrieking into the night as they suffer themselves to death, unable to be saved -- it takes a toll on him.

He manages to hide it from Claire, barely as she's known him for centuries now, and feigns tiredness after every battle, retreating to the barracks to try to remember how to breathe. It doesn't quite work for him, no matter how many times he tastes the horror that is war, but at least it gives him clarity of mind enough to block some of it out, pulling his arms away from his chest as the chill battle has left in its wake fades. He takes a moment, every time, to wonder why he came out here in the first place, and what it would cost to leave, and then he thinks better of it.

He's never been one to abandon the things that matter to him, too possessive even in his old age to change his opinions in that field, and he won't leave Claire to suffer the war alone. She's gotten so cold as the years have gone by, but he still likes to think things like this affect her in some way, and besides. He's seen what happens if he's not here -- his aptitude has gifted him with the ability to see how time lines run if he focuses hard enough, and he knows it's not pretty. He won't condemn her to that.

Pushing it out of mind, as he doesn't want to dwell too long on the things that hurt, in the wake of a sting of pain too sharp as it is, he sits on the bed for what feels like forever, blank. Then, slowly, he shifts, reaching for the trunk that he keeps at the end of the cot. He rifles through it, pushing away the things he's squirreled away over the course of the war -- clothing he never wears, weapons, and so on -- finding a stack of letters, bound in a leather cord, hiding at the bottom of the trunk.

He pulls them out, unwrapping them slowly, and sinks back into the cot as he settles them in his lap.

One by one, he reads them over, his own words, penned on anything he could find, and meant to be sent to Mohinder. He's never gotten around to sending them, isn't sure he even can this far out, but it doesn't stop him from writing them. The letters help him remember that somewhere, far away from here, things are saner -- that the Indian is waiting for him, somewhere. That the pain and fear and terror won't follow him home, when this is all over. That there's something untouched back home.

Marginally comforted, he pushes them out of his lap and leans over into the trunk again, pulling out a stub of a pencil he's managed to find and hold onto and a smattering of paper scraps. They're not much, but they're enough he figures, and that in mind, he rocks back, setting what little open space he has on folded legs and sets to writing. And slowly but surely, as he talks about things that have little to do with war and death, the chill falls away from his heart, giving him the strength to fight another day. Guiding him another day closer to being able to go home, to being able to see him.


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 663 (without lyrics)
Note: Lyrics are from One Armed Scissor by At the Drive-In, and were included for flavor because they helped inspire the writing.

for musebysentence: smirk

When he gets back to the room, he's bloodstained and tired, still wearing Nathan's face; she watches him for a moment then slides to one side of the bed, telling him to ditch the senator and to come back to her; the tension he didn't know he was carrying fades, leaving a smirk in its wake.

for whack_a_muse: kid tested, mother approved

In the two or so weeks that Sylar and Melissa had been hiding at her parents' house, the killer had picked up a few things about the family. Her mother was a lawyer, her father a doctor. Her grandmother took an hour a day to herself, where everyone had learned not to bother her, so that she could work on whatever book she was reading this month. Melissa's grandfather had an ear for music, if the perfect pitch he exhibited when he hummed along with her grandmother was any indication. Little things, mostly. Mundane things that made him wonder what the hell had happened to his whirlwind life and if he really missed it.

He couldn't say for sure one way or the other, not when that life had rained horror upon horror on him over the course of the last few years -- his stabbing, his sickness, the Petrelli mindjob, the idea that his father was like him -- but he couldn't stop from feeling pangs of loss for that life, now and again. Particularly in cases when Melissa's grandmother was around, ticking away quietly, probably unaware that she was picking at his sanity in every waking moment. She didn't seem to know she had an ability, after all, and judging by Melissa's reactions in conversations they'd had weeks ago, he doubted she knew either.

Still, though, the sound stung at him once he'd managed to place it, track it to someone else in the house, and rather than do something sane about it -- like telling Melissa -- he'd taken to following granny around the house. It was enough a taste of his old life to keep him from doing anything either grandmother or grandchild would make him regret, and it wasn't like her grandmother noticed, anyway. He was careful.

( Or so he thought until he decided it would be a good idea to stalk her during one of her little book club sessions. )

Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 1004
Note: Melissa's grandmother belongs to capturedworlds and is used with love and permission.

from claire

You Are Chinese Food

Exotic yet ordinary. People think they've had enough of you, but they're back for more in an hour.

What Kind of Food Are You?

Ordinary. Right.